1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a flooring material of extremely durable materials that provide a long wearing, inexpensive floor covering and more particularly the method of making the same from used tire casings.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior flooring material of this type has been proposed and methods for making the same may be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,037,898 and 3,352,733. A somewhat similar form of flooring is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,365 and in my co-pending patent application Ser. No. 06/631,323 filed July 16, 1984.
In U.S Pat. No. 3,037,898, a tire casing is cut into a continuous strip which is beveled, the strip being wound into a coiled body and a plurality of such coiled bodies arranged in side by side relation and the strips removed therefrom and bonded to one another and the resulting assembly abraded on one of its surfaces to provide a nap or pile-like surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,352,733 cuts narrow strips from a used tire casing, abrades the strips to leave exposed a portion of the cords extending upwardly from the same to form a carpet pile and assembles a plurality of the strips in side by side relation and bonds the bottom surfaces of the strips by a suitable adhesive to a backing sheet.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,365 positions strips cut from used tire casings alternately between strips of rigid materials and attaches the same mechanically thereto and my co-pending patent application discloses abrading a used tire casing to remove some of the rubber or resilient material therefrom and expose the tire cords so as to form a pile-like surface and then the cutting strips of the casing to form smooth, even sides and bonding the same together with a suitable adhesive to form a finished flooring unit. Commercial production of the flooring disclosed in my co-pending application encountered problems in the formation of the flooring "tiles" not anticipated in my co-pending application or in the prior art references and specifically the major problem of obtaining suitable bonding of the strips of used tire casing to one another due to the inability of the state of the art adhesives to bond the widely differing rubber, synthetic rubber, or resilient materials to one another and particularly where the outer rubber or resilient material of the tire casing differs substantially from the usual graphite-carbon-rubber or resilient material compound used as the inner layer of a tire casing.
Additional problems arose through the differences in the tread compounds and the materials used therein which resulted in discarding a very substantial percentage of the carpet "tiles" formed in accordance with my co-pending application for patent or the prior art references.
In the present invention, the strips used in forming the flooring material comprise elongate sections of the body of the used tire casing including the body plies and rubber or resilient material and the plies of tire cords and/or tire cord fabric.
The present invention thus relates to the formation of the strips of used tire casings being taken from within the actual body of the used tire casing where the rubber and/or resilient material in which the body plies of the casing are embedded is a uniform compound with the result that a state of the art adhesive such as alkyl 2-cyanoacrylate can and does form a permanent bond between the sides of the strips so as to form a permanent assembly thereof of a desired width and length such as twelve inches by twelve inches. The permanent bonding thus achieved by the present method of insuring that the surfaces of the strips being bonded are of uniform rubber and/or resilient material compound results in the unusual and highly desirable ability of the adhesive to permanently bond the strips to one another which also makes it possible to permanently bond the finished flooring "tiles" directly to a cement floor or the like and retain the highly desirable resilient, flexible nature of the flooring material.